Land use planning in India: Past and future

Abstract

Research work in the field of land use planning in India is reviewed and important milestones such as development of Agro-Ecological Region map of the country, development of soil suitability criteria for different crops grown in the country, customized soil survey for a commodity of interest like rubber, land use plans implemented at watershed and village levels and suggested land use plans for different administrative units are discussed. The constraints in developing land use plans are non-availability of adequate, reliable hydro-climatic data, associated natural resource data and socio-economic data. Soil suitability criteria for crops need to be relooked after new advances. Hitherto unaddressed issues like assessing common property resources, water resources, pasture lands, village commons, NTFP and their role in LUP etc. are highlighted. Future areas of work like land resource inventory of the nation at 1:10000 scale and LUP priorities like mapping prime lands for agriculture, studying land use changes and their impact on water availability, refining soil suitability criteria, delineating management units for nutrient management etc. are spelt out. Development of protocol for data collection, its geo-referencing, economic evaluation of land and other recommendations are made for effective land use planning. In this regard, a dynamic information system depicting different categories of land use and crop grown on each parcel of land needs to be developed. Use of geo-spatial technologies is fast becoming an essentiality for managing conflicting land use demands. It is felt that decision support systems need to be developed for different management units such as watershed, panchayat, block, tahsil, district etc.